shoelaces

My current casual shoes are a pair of sneakers which represent themselves as intended for skateboarding. I find this to be somewhat odd, for their laces are nearly frictionless. They routinely come untied. In general I have resorted to double-knotting them while morris dancing, but sometimes I dance before doing that. A couple of weeks ago one came untied during Bledington "William and Nancy", during the toeback capers, with feet far apart. I proceeded unhindered through the rounds, and then came the upright capers, with legs crossed. That was when I found myself standing on one of my laces just before the leap. That was when the fore and musician almost faltered as she giggled at me. She often has chided the dancers about laces -- usually it is the teens, not me, but this was not the first time for me, either.

In a previous instance I had told the fore that it seemed odd that skateboarding shoes might have loose laces. I said it seemed rather like Isadora Duncan and her fateful scarf trailing behind her. The fore responded that she had met the woman who gave that scarf to Isadora Duncan, for she was a friend of her mother.

This is only one of the treasures from morris dancing with this fore. Among her other experiences is catching frogs on the Carmel River with Ed Ricketts, Steinbeck's "Doc". She recalls being upset because she only had sneakers, while he was wearing hip waders.

So this Saturday I will happily head to Dickens Fair and dance, reinforcing the connections to what once was, and remembering that some of the past has been related to me personally by folks who were there.